Asymmetrical Warfare
by KUCrow1997
Summary: A twist based of the snatchers scene from Deathly Hallows. One Shot.


**Asymmetrical Warfare**

Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter franchise. Shame, really.

A/N: Just a little one shot I came up with while waiting for my muse to iron out a few details with chapter 21 of 'One Wizard'.

**The Forest of Dean - Late Fall 1997**

The leaves crunched underfoot as Harry Potter, 'Undesirable Number One' walked quickly through the small clearing. His movements were precise and slightly furtive as he moved toward the center of the glade.

"Keep going about another fifteen feet." Called Hermione Granger, from her position in the nearby treeline.

Harry didn't respond verbally, but signaled with an overhead thumbs up as he moved the required distance.

Hermione stood and walked a short way into the clearing to peer at the third member of their party. There, she saw Ron Weasley finish kicking some fallen leaves over something in the middle distance.

"Ron! You're sure you planted those things correctly?"

Ron looked up.

"Yes, Hermione. That message on the front of the thing is pretty obvious, innit?"

"It is, but really bad things can happen if you put them in wrong. I'm going to check anyway."

Ron sighed. "Daft woman!"

Hermione rolled her eyes at the not-so-secret comment as she tromped over to the small piles of brush and leaves. A shrill whistle pulled her attention to Harry, who was standing in the middle of the clearing and gesturing to the ground in a questioning manner.

"Yes Harry. Right there is fine."

Harry pulled a glass sphere from his jacket pocket and placed it on the ground at his feet.

Hermione checked over Ron's handiwork and pronounced it satisfactory for the job. Together, the two of them walked back toward the tree line, kicking brush over some wires laid out on the ground as they went. Harry knelt next to the glass sphere and held his wand out to the side.

Back in the trees, Hermione and Ron crouched behind a short rock wall and checked their various devices. Ron was hooking the wires up to a small metal 'clicker' device. A metal pin prevented him from accidently pushing down the lever on the implement.

Hermione at this time was lining up a piece of dragon bone with the plotted locations of six others she had secreted around the clearing. The piece she held was covered in carved designs of a runic nature and would soon glow with magical power when properly charged.

Ron finished his manipulations with the clicker. "Set!"

Hermione was finally satisfied with her ward stone placement. Her wand hovered over the key charging rune. "Set! When ever you're ready Harry!"

Harry nodded. He brought his wand around and placed it over the sphere. He tensed.

One. Two. Three.

He tapped the sphere with his wand once, and then took off running for the trees.

Ron pulled the pin from the clicker and waited.

Hermione sucked in a breath and mentally began to count down from thirty.

Harry reached the trees at twenty five and sprawled out behind a thick trunk. His wand was at the ready and pointed at the area near the sphere.

"Ten seconds!" Hermione called.

Ron tensed clicker at the ready.

The ten seconds passed in agonizing slowness.

Harry began to debate with himself. Did he activate the item correctly? Is it even working right? He knew he didn't have time to check the damn thing! What if it went off with him standing next to it?

Just as his nerves began to reach a fever pitch, the device activated.

The sphere, similar to those used in the Hall of Prophecies in the DOM, lit up. Instead of a seer's vision, this one contained a single word repeated three times.

"Voldemort! Voldemort! Voldemort!"

A few seconds passed in silence.

Ron whispered. "Maybe they didn't…"

But, they did. Six loud cracks echoed across the clearing as half a dozen Death Eaters apparated in a rough circle around the sphere.

"Oi! Who broke the taboo? Show yerselves!" The leader called out. The thuggish looking wizards turned outward to look for their prey.

Hermione jammed her wand into the ward stone and pushed her magic into it, charging up the anti apparition ward. "Now Ron!"

The redhead nodded, and clicked the lever twice.

Click, click.

Suddenly, a small pile of dead leaves near the Death Eaters seemed to explode towards them, shredding the two standing closest to it.

Click, click.

Boom! Another went off, killing two more and wounding a third.

The sixth and only unscathed Death Eater gasped as his attempt to apparate to safety failed.

"Ahhhh!" The Death Eater screamed as he tried to escape on foot. Unfortunately for him, he happened to run toward another small pile of leaves.

Click, click.

The blast turned the wizard into several middling sized chunks and deposited them haphazardly throughout the clearing, along with a coating of reddish mist.

Fortunately for Hermione, she was busy looking at her ward stone, and therefore missed the messy demise of the Death Eaters.

Harry and Ron did not.

"Oh gods! That was… Bleglchkk!" Ron lost his late lunch in a watery heave at the sight of disintegrating Death Eaters.

Harry was spared an extreme reaction due to his familiarity with death. It wasn't a pretty sight by any means, but one finds their standards are a little different if one happens to incinerate a man at age eleven.

'_Nope. A Quirellmort flambé really messes up one's sense of propriety.'_

Harry rose from his shelter and approached the mangled bodies. Five were obviously deceased, their physiology violently compromised by thousands of ball bearings moving at speed. One, however, was hanging on to life.

Harry approached the man, who was missing his wand arm and trying to apparate away unsuccessfully. The man's whimpers of pain and fear broke the stillness of the now quiet glade, as he tried to crawl away to whatever safety he could find. Harry rolled the man over with his foot and aimed for the head. The terror-stricken face looked familiar.

'_Adrian Pucey, Slytherin class of '96. Keeper for the house Quiddich team.'_

Pucey looked up and managed to stammer out a surprised "P-P-Potter?" through a blood-soaked mouth.

Harry said nothing, but sent a silent piercing hex at the snatcher's forehead and eliminated him. He then turned away without speaking and set to dismantling the ward in preparation of a move.

Hermione looked up from where she was rubbing the back of a distraught Ron, to frown in sadness at the sight of her other friend. They had planned to spring two more traps today in different sections of the forest before the early twilight came upon them. Maybe by then both she and Ron would be nearly as hardened as Harry was to causing death. Maybe then they would understand…

A/N: The Claymore mine, developed before the Vietnam War, was a small rectangular box set on legs. The 'business end' of the device is usually marked by upraised letters reading 'FRONT TOWARD ENEMY'. It consists of a thin strip of C4 explosive embedded with a large number of ball bearings and acts a bit like a giant shotgun. It can be triggered by tripwire or a handheld remote device. A decent movie-version of this mine can be seen towards the end of "Proof of Life" starring Russell Crowe.


End file.
